# Victor Hugo's most beautiful quotes

Victor Hugo lines that are still quoted today, with the work they come from: Les Misérables, Les Contemplations, Les Châtiments, Hernani… Only quotes checked against his texts.

- 11 votes · 13 items
- Apr 3, 2021 · Clémence Faure
- https://even.best/en/l/449/victor-hugo-s-most-beautiful-quotes

## Top 12

1. **Those who live are those who fight.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Les Châtiments (1853), a poem written in exile against Napoleon III.
2. **Tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside whitens, I will set out.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Les Contemplations (1856), the poem to his daughter Léopoldine, who drowned in 1843.
3. **It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Les Misérables (1862), about Jean Valjean.
4. **There are no bad weeds and no bad men. There are only bad cultivators.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Monsieur Madeleine in Les Misérables (1862).
5. **I am a force on the move!** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Hernani (1830), the play whose premiere sparked the «battle of Hernani».
6. **And if only one remains, I shall be that one!** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Ultima verba, in Les Châtiments (1853).
7. **The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of…** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — «The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.» Les Misérables (1862).
8. **When liberty returns, I will return.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Actes et paroles: his answer to Napoleon III's amnesty in 1859, from exile in Guernsey.
9. **To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Les Misérables (1862).
10. **Laughter is sunshine; it chases winter from the human face.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Les Misérables (1862).
11. **Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — William Shakespeare (1864), his essay on the English playwright.
12. **One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Histoire d'un crime (1877); the origin of the famous «nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come».
13. **Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Toilers of the Sea (1866).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.